Case Number 14927: Small Claims Court

I See You.Com

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All Rise...

Judge William Lee now believes in DVD spam.

The Charge

Know where your family is? Don't look now. They may be on the Web for the
whole wide world to see.

The Case

The lifespan of new trends is short in today's popular culture. The latest
thing becomes mainstream and is then yesterday's news before you're finished
downloading the latest version of iTunes. Arriving on DVD about eight years too
late to be topical, I See You.com is an unfunny and distasteful comedy
about a family that becomes unwitting Internet celebrities as a result of their
live webcasts via hidden cameras. Apparently, sex sells and desperate people are
willing to humiliate themselves for money. And if that's a revelation for you, I
suggest you finish that magazine article about "surfing the 'Net"
before you continue reading this review.

Harvey Bellinger (Beau Bridges, My Name is Earl), the patriarch of
the family, is a toilet salesman who is stubbornly computer illiterate. His
daughter from his first marriage, Audrey (Baelyn Neff, Driftwood), is a bubbly, high school senior
with a wild side. The other half of the family is Lydia (Rosanna Arquette, Dead Cool), a former B-movie star and
centerfold model, and her son Colby (Mathew Botuchis), a mean and obnoxious
16-year-old who will make you long for the bratty, '80s skateboarder charm of
Corey Feldman. Colby also has a female friend, Randi (Shiri Appleby, What Love Is), who's crushing on him but he
can't see past her plain looks. And by "plain looks" I obviously mean
if it weren't for her piercings, Goth-punk fashion, and atrocious wigs, she
would be a total knockout.

It's the summer of 2001 and Harvey has just lost his job while Lydia has
lost the family's savings day trading in doomed tech stocks. Meanwhile, there's
resentment brewing between the stepsiblings after word is leaked out about their
drunken tryst at a rave. Colby takes revenge against Audrey for his smashed
laptop by setting up hidden web cams in her bedroom and charging for the
peepshow on the Internet. After the money starts rolling in, Colby wires the
entire house so subscribers can watch his mother in the bath and his stepfather
on the toilet. He uses enough surveillance cameras, each with bright red lights
on their fronts, to cover more angles than the Big Brother house but no
one notices until their pictures are featured on magazine covers. After Colby's
found out, however, the family's anger takes a back seat to their greed. The
website is earning $17,000 each week so they decide to continue the charade of a
real family unknowingly being broadcast to the world.

The movie's biggest problem is a lack of sympathetic characters. None of the
Bellinger clan possess any admirable qualities, least of all Colby who is
presented as a creepy sociopath. Harvey never does enough to break his image as
a failed breadwinner and his silence over the exploitation of his daughter
doesn't make him any more appealing. Audrey garnered some pity from me initially
as Colby's victim but the script has her quickly turn into an opportunistic
bimbo.

The first part of the movie concerns Colby's exploitation of his family and,
as sleazy as that premise is, at least it has some teeth. After the family gets
in on the action, I See You.com pretends it's a behind-the-scenes showbiz
comedy. Colby and Randi immediately produce show bibles to guide the behavior of
their webcast personas. Harvey refers to himself as the "show runner."
They even hire voice-over artist Don LaFontaine to record promos. Incredibly,
the world is still supposed to believe that the Bellingers are an unscripted
slice of real life.

Included among the supplements is a puff piece titled "15 Minutes of
Fame" promoting the movie. The filmmakers talk about the originality of the
story and how it was inconceivable when they were writing it (I'm guessing circa
2003) that reality TV would dominate the airwaves today. They must not have been
paying attention when the themes of both unwitting and willing stars of reality
TV were addressed in The Truman Show
(1998) and EdTV (1999), the latter was already a remake of a
French-Canadian movie. As for teenagers using the Internet for voyeurism, American Pie found a way to handle the
subject that was hilarious and not repulsively criminal.

The image quality of this DVD transfer is very good. The picture is clean
and sharp. Most scenes are brightly lit so there is low contrast within the
frame but the details throughout the sets are nicely rendered. The 5.1 surround
sound is less impressive. The forgettable music is energetically directed to the
surround channels while the dialogue from the center is quieter and a bit
indistinct. The DVD also comes with instructions to download a Windows
Media-compatible digital copy of the movie (offer expires September 16,
2009).

I See You.com could have been a comedy about voyeurism, but its
creepy protagonist keeps the material from being fun. As a critique of showbiz,
the movie has nothing new to say about the Internet or the nature of being a
celebrity. As a satire of reality television, it feels so yesterday. I've
seen you, and you're guilty.